When We Were Friends Read Online Free PDF Page B

Sydney.
    “How’s Steve?” I asked.
    “Oh you know.” She rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “It’s baseball season, so I could stride across the room butt-nekkid and he’d tell me to get out of the way.” She shrugged. “I’m glad you’re here, by the way, it’s perfect timing. I just took out a batch of those toffee bars your mom loves. Should I pack you a box?”
    “That’d be great, thanks,” I said, and raised a hand to Sydney.
See, I am known in this town, and loved
.
    “You’re the one she’s here to meet?” Chelsea smiled at Sydney. “Lainey’s one of my favorite people, you know.”
    “You’re full of it,” I said.
    “No, really! You’re one of my top ten favorites. Or, if you count Colin Firth, Nora Roberts, and Tibetan spiritual leaders, at least one of my top twenty. You want the usual?”
    I glanced at Sydney’s table and saw she was drinking black coffee, nothing else. “I’ll have a medium,” I said. “Just black.”
    Chelsea raised her eyebrows. I was a drinker of full fat doubledouble mochas with extra syrup and foam. But thankfully, she didn’t comment.
    I sat across from Sydney at the small round table, wishing I had silverware to play with. Instead I rubbed my thumb over the faded polyester rose on the table, like I was testing it to see whether it was real.
    I’d planned to play this completely nonchalantly, no anger, no excitement, the same way I’d talk to a potential employer about a job I didn’t particularly want. But as soon as I opened my mouth, I failed. “So look,” I said. “I don’t know why you called. But more than anything I’m thinking, my God, what nerve you have to want to get together after however many years, pretending like nothing happened between us. Wanting to go out for coffee like you’re suddenly my best friend.”
    “I used to be.” Sydney smiled at me crookedly. “I mean when you’re that close to someone, whatever happens, that never completely goes away. I’ve been thinking how you share all my same memories, so many things only the two of us know. And I hate how we lost our connection to all that history.”
    “That sounds lovely,” I said. “Actually I’ve gotta say it’s the loveliest bullshit I ever heard.”
    “Lainey …” She slumped back in her chair. “I just thought, I don’t know, maybe it’d be good for both of us if we made amends. I wanted to say something when you came by last week, but I didn’t have any idea how to talk about it. What could I do, apologize? Try and explain? You’d probably have hit me.”
    She seemed suddenly so wavery around the edges, so pained, that I had the ridiculous urge to comfort her. Instead I said, “I’m usually not big on violence but yeah, I might’ve.”
    “Lainey, look. Can I show you something?” She unzipped the purse hanging from her chair, reached inside and pulled out an envelope. “I found this in a box of old things when I was moving out of David’s house and trying to decide what to bring and what to throw away.”
    She handed me the envelope. Inside was a handful of photographs, all taken the summer before junior year. She watched me flip through them, then said, “I didn’t throw these away.”
    “Well I’m touched,” I said sarcastically, but in truth, I was a little touched.
    In the photos we were dressed in clothes somebody should’ve stopped us from wearing, jeans shorts that were both too tight and too high-waisted, bright-colored tank tops that bunched around our breasts. We were posing for the camera, supermodel poses, our backs arched, chests bared and heads thrown back. Laughing. And studying the photos, the thing that struck me was how very young we were.
    A month later would be the Custard Queen talk, and soon after the teasing would start. All those kids I’d been so scared of, had their cheeks and chins been this round? Their smiles this unguarded? How were the actions of children, who’d probably had no idea what they were doing,